Los Angeles will utilize AI-powered scanners at Union Station over the next month in an effort to stop passengers with hidden weapons from boarding the rails. Commuters descending to underground platforms for the A, B and D lines (formally known as the Blue, Red and Purple lines) will enter into the testing ground for Metro's 30-day pilot program, which went into effect on Tuesday, though the scanners will not run every day. The program arrives amid growing concern over passenger safety, with Metro recording an uptick in arrests this year for riders carrying concealed weapons. The roughly 6-foot-tall Evolv Technology scanners use artificial intelligence to pinpoint on a person's body where they could possibly be carrying a weapon, according to the company's website. All weapons are banned on the Metro system, and it is illegal to carry a concealed firearm without a permit in California.

Facial recognition is being widely embraced as a security tool -- law enforcement and corporations alike are rolling it out to keep tabs on who's accessing airports, stores, and smartphones. As it turns out, the technology is fallible. Researchers with the artificial-intelligence firm Kneron announced that they were able to fool some facial-recognition systems using a printed mask depicting a different person's face. The researchers, who tested systems across three continents, said they fooled payment tablets run by the Chinese companies Alipay and WeChat, as well as a system at a border checkpoint in China. In Amsterdam, a printed mask fooled facial recognition at a passport-control gate at Schiphol Airport, they said.

Facial recognition is being widely embraced as a security tool -- law enforcement and corporations alike are rolling it out to keep tabs on who's accessing airports, stores, and smartphones. As it turns out, the technology is fallible. Researchers with the artificial-intelligence firm Kneron announced that they were able to fool some facial-recognition systems using a printed mask depicting a different person's face. The researchers, who tested systems across three continents, said they fooled payment tablets run by the Chinese companies Alipay and WeChat, as well as a system at a border checkpoint in China. In Amsterdam, a printed mask fooled facial recognition at a passport-control gate at Schiphol Airport, they said.

An ex-Apple engineer has been charged with stealing secret blueprints for the tech giant's automated car project before trying to flee the US for China. Xiaolang Zhang was arrested by FBI agents at San Jose airport in California on Saturday when he passed through a security checkpoint. He is accused of downloading the plan for a circuit board for the automated car just days before he quit to go to a Chinese self-driving car startup. The charge is punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A criminal complaint filed on Monday said Zhang was hired by Apple in December of 2015 to develop software and hardware for the company's autonomous vehicle project, where he designed and tested circuit boards to analyze sensor data.

What do "Star Trek" (original series, of course) and "Transformers" have in common? They have been closer to more accurately predicting the future than all the futurists combined. From Artificial Intelligence (AI) infused computers, to handheld communications devices, to robots that can replicate human tasks, to lethal autonomous weapons systems, fiction has become fact. One fact I have written about before is how the United States is in a race with China for robotic and AI superiority. The implications cover national security, defense, health care, the economy, education, public safety, transportation, outer space and more.

Our individual walking styles, much like snowflakes, are unique. With this in mind, computer scientists have developed a powerful new footstep-recognition system using AI, and it could theoretically replace retinal scanners and fingerprinting at security checkpoints, including airports. Neural networks can find telltale patterns in a person's gait that can be used to recognize and identify them with almost perfect accuracy, according to new research published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. The new system, called SfootBD, is nearly 380 times more accurate than previous methods, and it doesn't require a person to go barefoot in order to work. It's less invasive than other behavioral biometric verification systems, such as retinal scanners or fingerprinting, but its passive nature could make it a bigger privacy concern, since it could be used covertly.

UVeye, an Israeli startup that is building computer vision and machine learning technology to be used to help detect security threats by scanning the underside of passing vehicles, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Ahaka Capital, with participation from angel network SeedIL. Initially being applied to roadside security -- such as stopping car bombs or drugs smuggling -- UVeye's tech claims to be able to analyse any vehicle from underneath to identify and detect threats that would otherwise be concealed to the human eye, even as it is moving, up to 28 MPH, apparently. It does this using "strategically angled and synchronised hi-res cameras" to build a 360 degree digital model, and says that three seconds after a vehicle passes over UVeye's ground installed device, the system is able to process multiple images to create a 3D model of the undercarriage and provide high resolution full colour visuals to rule out any security risks. This is also where UVeye's combination of vehicle manufacture-supplied data and machine learning kicks in, which can compare and track characteristics of different vehicle models for differentiators, such as weight and part placement.

I was waiting in line at the airport recently, thinking about my Escatak concept--an idea to combine check-in, security, and customs in one escalator ride. And I figured: Why wait until you reach the airport to get that process started? Sure, you can check-in remotely and get your boarding pass on your phone, but you still have to wait in line to register and check your luggage. So I've drummed up the Nexus, an autonomous minivan concept that carries you to the airport, and on the way gets you fully ready for your flight. This self-driving van would carry a modified luggage trunk that would weigh, measure, and inspect each bag with an x-ray and chemical analysis, in conjunction with airport security.